Ch. 3: Gerald
Back to Arheled Gerald was pretty sure this was a nightmare. It had to be, with the surreal horror mounting on horror that each day brought. Because the only other thought was that it wasn’t. And that way fell into madness. Or it could be Purgatory. It had started a long time ago, with the dragon dreams and the horrid, beastial urgings of his body. Masturbations haunted his sleep, and soon his waking. He learned to make frequent Confessions and evolve little ways of keeping his will clean when the insanity—for what else was it when your reason went haywire?—roared into him. Endure it, clench some little part of you against it, so that when it passes you rise up sane. It had become clear as hell at the carnival. If before had been insanity, that was madness. He watched in dim horror as his body, gripped with dull cramping ache, changed into a monster and pulled down a screaming child. He felt like a man riding a bear as he hauled at his body, his teeth snapping inches above the paralysed face. Grimly his human will stuck to the task, forcing the monster off the boy, and then inch by inch forcing it to the side until it faced a giant willow tree; and then letting go he roared at it to kill. The willow was old and very thick, but it lost half its’ girth and all its’ bark to the monster’s assault. Then the dragon’s carnivorous stomach started reacting to the willow wood, and it rolled over and over, retching bark and wood and watery slime. He felt a dim urge to attack the Churches, but another bout of nausea gripped him and he was able to ignore the command. How do you remain human when your own body is mongrel, shared with a reptile and subject to its’ atavistic demands? He had hunted in the marshes when his stomach settled, and was contentedly devouring a beaver the day afterward. The sun was bright and hot, and the cool water felt so nice to his animal flesh. Must not be a fire-dragon, then. He thought for a moment of Camille, and a twist of misery gripped his stomach: what she would make of him like this, when she had barely even deigned to hang out with him at the beach, he couldn’t imagine. Or what his body would make of her, for that matter. He didn’t know how it would react to seeing a human. Was it even possible to shift back? He tried, but though he felt a sort of muscle in his mind that he knew would do it, body and soul shuddered like inducing vomit and he dared not try again. A human was standing on the far shore. Gerald’s body tensed, for it knew this man, it knew him very well, though the boy’s mind, racing, could not place him. He had seen him on the ferris wheel, hadn’t he? That awful vision of the burning teens, the seven-headed dragon commanding him to adore (and he had not, he had slunk off, hoping not to be seen, when he saw the child)…this was him, he suddenly knew. This was the source of it all. This was the Father of the Dragons. “So you know me now.” the beaming man said in a hearty voice. It was a voice that irritated him intensely. “I thought I would find you in here, swamp-lizard.” “My name’s Gerald.” he made his dragon-voice say. Cornello bowed, mockingly. “How nice to meet you.” he sneered. “I didn’t give you that body so you could chew on rodents. I have use for my children.” “I’m not your child!” Cornello was growing, huger and huger, a dragon now, and a dragon with seven heads. “Oh yes, you are.” he laughed. “I came to your mother when your foster dad was at work, and one look at my eyes and I could do whatever I wanted. Such soft little…” Gerald closed his ears, as dragons can, and let the faint rumble of sickeningly detailed words describing his mother’s charms roll over him. He opened them again when he realized the dragon had moved on. “We went out to the places she had always sort of longed for, even when she shook her head the next second, aghast, and denied it. We had so much pleasure there. Dragon-eyes, Gerald. Dragon-spell, Gerald. Like what you’re under right now.” For Gerald (he remembered this forever with horror and misery) was not objecting, was not furious but panting, dragon-drool spilling from his mouth. The Father of Dragons gave a hideous smile “You Catholics never let yourselves have any fun,” he jeered, “and when you do, guilt racks you. Rack, then, virgin, and be virgin no more! Gerald’s body shrank and shifted until he sprawled, human and naked, in the pond-lilies. Mud bubbled around him with an organic stench, slick and caressingly smooth on his skin, like soft hands. Pleasure coursed through him. Lifting his eyes he saw wading thigh-deep toward him the girl he had often dreamed about kissing: Camille, buxom and brash but amazingly cute, and she smiled at him: and she too was naked. “Your senses will return in the middle of your fun, and torture you with guilt and with knowledge of your loss. For no Dragon-born remains a virgin in my care.” the Father of Dragons said awfully from behind them. Gerald resolutely shut out the memory whenever it came to him. Why did he remember so clearly what he did under the spell? What she looked like…how she had felt…He had shunned her in the dragon-camp ever since. For that matter, he wasn’t even sure if she remembered at all. She barely noticed him. He found out soon enough his dragon-power. The Father of Dragons had made a big mistake with him. He blended. He vanished. And when he did, he soon found, not even dragons could see him. Thus he escaped the horror of that night, when the Father of Dragons raped his own children and made them rape each other, both in dragon and in human form. Cornello, however, had come looking for him, and Gerald had blended with the ground and became so invisible not even his Father saw him. Or so he hoped, at any rate. Cornello could have been pretending, to lure him to a false sense of security. He had not dared try to escape. Now, after his dragon-body had been possessed into devouring his hated companions as they devoured him, Gerald found himself in Hell. Because, if the dragon boot camp was nightmare, then this place was damnation. Barren stone and barren sand as far as eye could see. And out of the stone the dragons were crawling, the real dragons, the ancient enemies of all that were good. When they had first stirred he had vanished, and the spell that turned the others to stone did not touch him. But they could sense him, somehow: they were aware there was another that evaded them. Let them. Let them eat me. Let them lay me in merciful stone, that I may be for a little while free of my damnation. “Gerry!” someone was hissing. “Psst! Gerry!” He was unseen. He was blended. Perhaps they might not find him. Who was he fooling? They would smell him. The person trying to get his attention lobbed a rock. It glanced off his tail and he reflexively whirled his head. Camille was there, in her own shape, human, clothed in a blue tanktop and black shorts she’d been wearing when she first changed. Swiftly he slithered lizard-like across the open ground towards her. Outside their shelter the dragons crawled, vast dragons like hills and smaller dragons in every shape and size. “In here.” she beckoned. A cave opened behind her. He changed to human-shape to follow. “How can you see me?” “It’s my Dragon-power.” she said. “I’m a Seeing-dragon. I shoot bolts of sight.” “Fantastic. So you make your foes see better. Or do you shoot eyes at them?” “No, silly, I wreck their vision with uncontrolled focus and unfocus. Anyway, I can see through your power.” “That figures. It would have to be you.” “What’re you so bitter at '' me'' for?” she said. “It’s not like I'' made you dragon.” “You really don’t remember? The river? The pond-lilies?” “So we had sex. Big deal. It’s not like I killed you or something.” He stared at her, revulsion mingling with incredulity in his face. “That’s all it is to you??” he exploded. “Just like that, ‘We had sex, So what, Who cares’. What do you think it was, a date? A little swim in the pond? A kiss or two?” “On the boobs.” He got to his feet so sharply he knocked his head on the cave. “You’re despicable.” His voice shook with rage. “I fight all my life against these things, and you just wallow in them! You don’t even try! You don’t even know how to try! Love? Marriage?? ''Children?? Any of these ringing a bell?” “Maybe you could sit down and tell me exactly what on earth you’re talking about.” He did, so abruptly he raised dust. “Sorry.” he said. “I kind of tend to assume people know right from wrong. Sex is part of love. It’s supposed to beget children and express the love of a couple. Therefore it’s holy, and should only be done inside marriage. You understand any of that?” “Oh, I see.” she said with a slightly superior smirk. “You’re religious, is that it. You’ve got yourself all rigged up with guilt-trips every time you slip.” She sprawled across the cave floor. There was blood on her face. There was blood on Gerald’s hand. He clutched his arm with his other hand, staring at the bloody hand as if it had belonged to a demon. They stayed like that, breathing heavily, for a minute, Camille looking in shock and wariness at him, he staring in equal shock at his hand. “I’m sorry.” she said, sitting up. “That was mean. I shouldn’t have made fun of you.” “I struck you.” There was agony in his voice. “To add to all my other sins, I drew your blood.” She shifted to dragon and back, healed. “Don’t beat yourself up.” she said kindly, detaching his grip from his arm. “I had it coming. It’s all right.” She planted a little kiss on his brow. Her honey-colored hair swung around her brusque but pretty face. “Thank you.” he said hoarsely. “I guess I see what you were saying.” she said. “It is kind of special. If it’s any comfort, I smile each time I remember that day.” “I try not to.” Gerald murmered. “You see, I was virgin. Our Father,” he spat, “took it from me, to torment me. I knew I had done wrong. I’m pretty sure I was not guilty, but I felt like I’d betrayed you. I’d sinned against you, even if I wasn’t guilty.” “You Catholics are really strange people.” “Which is why the Dragons hate us.” “I don’t, and I’m dragon.” “Maybe because you’re a Seeing-dragon.” Camille smiled. “Let’s see if the dragons are gone,” she said, crawling towards the cave-mouth. Her shorts were tight against her rear and were dirty and smelly from two weeks without washing—whenever they hadn’t been consumed in her dragon-shape. “We might find a way out.” “We’re dead.” said Gerald. “Dead people don’t bleed.” she shot over her shoulder. “We’re in a graveyard. He said so.” “That’s ‘Dead '' men'' don’t bleed.’” “That’s sexist.” “Huh?” “Oh, come on. You don’t know what that means??” “Yes, it means women discriminating against men.” She stopped crawling and stared at him. “It does not! Women are the ones who get discriminated against!” “Then why aren’t men pushing to blot out female adjectives from the language? Seems all I hear about are rabid women raving against men.” She was so flabbergasted she sputtered incoherently for a second before turning her back. “That’s it, I’m not talking to you.” she said as she crawled on. Gerald followed, an amused look on his face. They emerged from the cave and stood, staring, at the place in which they found themselves. The landscape of barren crags was gone. Incredibly steep wooded mountains fell in cascades of lumpy dark green and blue to great river gorges down which yellow rivers splashed. The trees near at hand were completely unfamiliar: odd evergreens, queer-shaped broadleaves, oaks recognizable only by the general form of the leaves, and growing among them curious long canes with wooden stems, like mammoth reeds. “Bamboo.” Camille said in a hushed voice. “What is this place?” A meandering mountain path wound up past the cave, and toiling up it was a spindly man in baggy clothes with a curious pointed conical straw cap, shallow and broad, tentlike over his head. On his back was fastened a huge bundle of sticks. “Better get into dragon-shape.” said Gerald. He and Camille shifted shape and perched at the entrance, sniffing furiously. There were so many strange new smells in the air! Camille’s dragon-form was blue with a brown belly, very feminine and graceful, with wings. Beside her Gerald crouched like a medieval salamander. The toiling man seemed to hold the cave in some awe, for long before he could have noticed them he was making all sorts of curious sweeping gestures and bobbings of the head, as one does when passing a very dangerous and sacred place. He had a seamed yellow face with a stringy rat-tail mustache and beard, and an anxious pinched look about his slanted slits of eyes. When he saw them he gave such a convulsive start he fell over on his back, the bundle fastening him like a turtle as he kicked frantically. Camille laughed, but Gerald slithered down to him and with his prehensile tail lifted him up. “It’s all right, you needn’t fear us.” he said. The poor man, finally shrugging off the straps of his burden, was kneeling, bowing his head repeatedly to the ground and gabbling with great rapidity in a peculiar tongue. “Can you understand any of that?” said Camille curiously. “A little.” said Gerald. “It’s an odd language. All sorts of irrelevant words, and the same word seems to mean totally different things. It sounds…kind of Chinese. Oriental, I mean.” “Ask him where we are.” “I thought you weren’t talking to me.” “I’m not talking with '' you. I will talk ''to you. Talking with '' you implies a friendly conversation.” “And we were getting along so nice.” “Retard.” Gerald had to ask the man several times before he got any sort of coherent answer. “He seems to think we’re gods or something. I can’t make out whether it’s because we came from this cave or because we’re dragons. All he seems to know about this place is that it is East. He repeats some name over and over. I think it means Dragonthrone.” The man was—with many repeated bowings—trying to shoulder his burden. Gerald put it on his back. “Where do you live?” he addressed the peasant. The stammering man, distressed by seeing a dragon act like a beast of burden, pointed up the path. “Wait a minute, how can you understand him?” demanded Camille, spreading her wings. “I’m a dragon.” said Gerald. “Dragons’ hearts are supposed to enable you to understand even birds and animals.” “Then how come ''I can’t understand him?!” “Maybe you’re just not listening.” The peasant led them up the mountain path. It was bordered by knobs of ancient moss above a steep fall, sometimes sheer, and the trees would fall away and reveal vast yawning vistas of green mountains thousands of feet high above blue-misted gorges and green bottoms. It must be torrid down there, from the haze. At length they came to a place where the mountain leaned back a little, permitting the construction of countless terrace-fields. They fell like great green stairs of narrow long steps, curving with the mountain. In a more sheltered recess rickety buildings of poles and thatch crouched against the slope, tree bark arranged like siding along the walls. With the long ends of the poles projecting every which way, they had a look both fantastic and squalid. Bent figures in more stovecap hats were dotted here and there about the fields. “He’s babbling something about the Grandfather now.” said Gerald. “Probably their oldest inhabitant or patriarch. Keep a civil tongue in your head, Camille.” “You should talk, you girl-beater.” He gave her such a smouldering stare she subsided. Depositing the bundle at the panicky pleas of the peasant, Gerald followed him to a stony outcrop of yellow rock, on which sat an old man with a fallen-in, toothless mouth and wild white hair, asleep in the sun. The peasant, torn between respect and urgency, babbled loudly as he turned this way and that. The old man woke up after a few minutes of this, blinking curiously at the dragons. When he realized just what they were, he got very carefully to his feet and bowed, saying something. “What is it?” said Camille. “He’s inviting us inside in very elaborate polite terms.” said Gerald. He got in a few questions, the old man blinking as if Gerald had been rude, and turning to Camille said, “He says we’re at the extremity of the Morning, and very near the Sun’s rising. He also says it’s the 7000th year of the Glorious Emporers.” “Yep, Chinese all through.” said Camille. There was a trumpeting sound. The Grandfather started, looking extremely nervous. He said something over his shoulder. Gerald’s face was grim as he translated. “Divine Emporer’s men.” They watched, apprehensive. There was a stiff wind blowing, and a rumor like a rising storm. Neither of them were quite prepared for the sight that flew into view around a corner of the mountain. It was a giant violet dragon, mighty wings raising a perfect hurricane, the back spiky with soldiers in scale-green armour. “They come and take their young men and pretty virgins and the best of the crop.” Gerald translated another string of grim words. “What will they do to us?” Camille murmered. “Frankly, I’m not really keen on finding out, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t intend to staff more child-raiding expeditions of these guys.” “They could be quite nice, we’re worshipped here, aren’t we?” “Ever hear of what their gods are sometimes made to do?” Gerald said grimly. “It wouldn’t surprise me if we are Jack Sparrow gods.” At the implication Camille’s white throat gulped. “What should we do?” she said tartly. “Make them crash.” said Gerald. Their powers beamed as one. Gerald’s blast of Unseeing made half the mountain invisible. Camille’s blast of Seeing tricked the huge dragon into steering right for a great, dead, broken pine rising like a spear from the top of a ridge. She fired several more confusing-beams, until the great purple dragon flew at top speed, belly-first, right into the ridge. It screamed as the huge pine speared it. Beetled men spilling from its’ back, it toppled burning into the depths, until it exploded. “Go.” the old man urged. “Go! After what you have done, they will search for you.” Sobered and shaken, the two dragons complied, scurrying off into the woods. “Why did we have to go and mess things up?” Camille complained. “He might have given us something to eat.” “And then we’d have eaten some of his precious livestock, and he’d die. These people are starving, Camille. I don’t know if you realize what that means.” “Yeah, it means I’m hungry.” Gerald beamed a ray at a tree, making it invisible as a bird dived toward it. The bird flew smack into the unseen trunk. Camille was upon it before it even hit the ground. “Try to make it last.” Gerald said blandly. They climbed up the mountain in silence. The air grew cooler as the ground steepened. In their dragon-shapes they were much less tired than they should have been and were able to plug away steadily. The forest became pine, strange pines with broad flat needles, stunted, crouching against the slope. They came out on a ridge of bare stone and gazed around. The crazy steep mountains tossed and tumbled far around them. On the edge of sight they made out a shining city, like a cloudy star. “You have certainly made a mess for yourselves.” said a girl’s voice critically, near at hand. They spun around. A slim young girl, yellow-skinned, glossy black hair flowing around an impassive Oriental face, stood there on the mountaintop. She wore a strange colorful dress, and was, Gerald thought, the second most beautiful thing in God’s good earth. “Who are you?” said Camille. “I Jade of Dark Locks. I and honorable aunt are last of Dragonwatchers. You come now. It is too exposed on the mountain, and the gods have keen eyes.” They followed as the girl imperiously turned on her heel and headed into the scrub pines of the ridge. Tucked under and built into a massive nest of ledge, below the summit, was the queerest and prettiest little dwelling they had ever seen. Pines hugged it close, and a curious vine with faint red flowers covered the sides. A delicate scent confused their noses, and all at once they could not see the house. The girl watched them, a slight smile in her slanted eyes, though her lips barely moved. “Walk as men, if you would approach.” she said. “It is only because you are half of half that you saw even so much. It is shadowvine. It hides from dragons.” Camille and Gerald reverted to human with some relief. They looked glaringly out of place in the mountain setting in front of the girl’s dress, Camille with her black cloth shorts and tight blue blouse that hugged her buxom figure, Gerald in blue jeans and green T-shirt with the wacky horse logo. The house became visible again. “Cool.” he said. “A dragon-repellant vine.” “Enter.” Jade of Dark Locks bade them, pulling open a door hidden underneath the shadow-vine. It had a peaked top, flaring down to square angles like a pagoda, but was made of red pine-wood. Sweet strange smells came out to meet them. “Wait.” said Gerald, recalling old stories of the absurdly elaborate manners of Chinese. “Pardon us, for we are but rude foreigners, but is there anything we are supposed to do to be polite when entering?” Jade looked as impassive as ever, but Gerald was quite sure she was surprised. “Yes, there is.” she said. She made them remove their shoes and dip their fingers and toes into a bowl of strange-smelling water and shake their hands in a certain way; Gerald did it well enough, but Camille was clumsy. Then, barefooted (Gerald thought it prudent to remove his dirty socks as well) they followed Jade under the door. Inside was not dark as they expected from such a windowless place. Windows there were indeed, strangely shaped windows covered with shadowvine, so that it was like thin curtains drawn, letting in a dim pink light. A fire burned on a beautiful Oriental hearth, lined with porcelain tile. Soft lamps had been kindled and glowed from holders, lighting the deeper parts of the strange house. Graceful furniture stood about, and rice screens painted with colorful designs covered the walls. Near the fire sat an old but majestic woman, wrapped in a great shawl. She turned her head and regarded them impassively. “Greet the Aunt in proper fashion, as I do.” murmered Jade to them. She sank gracefully on her knees, touching her forehead to the floor. Camille and Gerald looked at each other, appalled, but went on their knees and tried to imitate Jade. Gerald being naturally more courteous managed more gracefully than poor Camille, who had no notion of ceremony at all. “Enough!” The old woman’s voice was like a snapped twig. “Cease mangling the ancient customs. You two are evidently as barbaric as the others. Stand and greet me in your own customs, if you have any.” They got up, dusty and hot in the face. Camille looked appealingly at Gerald. He made as elegant a bow as he could imagine, bending at the waist, and she managed to imitate him clumsily. “It seems you have a rudiment of manners after all, underneath your barbaric exterior, young man.” the Aunt said, a trifle less frostily. “Not you, rude slattern, raised without culture or even decent clothing: Jade must put you in one of her dresses before I will even consent to look upon you again.” Jade of Dark Locks took Camille by the arm and led her further within. “Come before me, young man.” said the Aunt. “My head aches from turning, and I am loathe to move. Would stir the fire? Ah. Now sit before me, that I may see you better.” Gerald sat down beside the fire, trying to imitate the cross-legged way the old woman’s legs were disposed beneath her dress. He kept his back as rigid as possible, folding his hands across each other in his lap as she was doing. Rugs were spread right up to the rough stone hearth. When he was settled Gerald looked up and met her gaze. “Your names?” she said. “I am Gerald. This is Camille.” “Again, that name.” the Aunt murmered. “The other girl, she was Camilla, but he was Kevin. They reeked of darkness, those two. I set them on their path and cursed their backs as they left. But you…the girl is ill reared, while you are not evil at all.” “I am dragon, unwilling.” he said. She nodded, her face stern. “When the dragons walk in time I am afraid, for I must set them to learn, and learning they grow more fearsome still. I would kill them, but no dragon truly dies, for their Father calls them from the Graveyard whenever he sees fit.” “Please, madam, where are we? Is this China?” “China?” she said, considering. “That name will not come to be for many ages yet. China is an aftercomer, a new growth, a transplanted culture learned from old relics and old teachers after the earth drowns. But that drowning will not happen for three Ages: the Age of Men, and of Ice, must come first.” “We’re in…the past??” he exclaimed. “Forgive me, but—I thought such was impossible.” “You are not the only dragons to walk here.” she replied. “Every time, the event is the same: they come from the cave, they cause the dragon to crash, they flee here and are led here by Jade. And to us it seems the first, but Jade and I, we have the Sight, and we know. We know that we have repeated the same actions many times in the same instant, and we remember those times, and what we say. As to what is happening: I suspect I am speaking in a moment of eternity, outside Time, in which however many times I speak I am still in that moment.” “You relive this event?” “No.” she snapped. “I simply am aware, as I pass through this instant, that I have spoken no less than fifteen conversations with fifteen different young dragon-men, sending the girls off for dresses. You are the sixteenth. I remember each conversation distinctly, and I also know that this I have with you is the last. You are not acting on your own, young man. You tread a path rigidly trodden, nor will you be able to turn from it to the left or to the right: you are in the Past, and it has already happened, but it is happening to you.” Gerald left it: it was too confusing right now. “But if this isn’t China, what is it?” “It is'' Dragonthrone.”'' the Aunt replied. “It is the empire in the East. Here withdrew the Dragons, slowly leaving the far North, for they heard that here beneath the Sun the dragons were now gods. In the West the Dark Lord is beckoning, but the dragons do not stir, for they are for themselves and not for Him. And the vast armies of Hither Palisor sit beneath their sway and send no help to Sauron. The Romestamo backs them, but I doubt whether his great wisdom sees true in this, for the Dragons may not sit content to rule the Lands of the Sun, but may well spread west, should Sauron fall. But that is Wizards’ matter; Wizards were sent here for such purpose.” “Sauron?” breathed Gerald. “The Lord of the Rings?” “Even he.” the old woman nodded. “I see some rumor of him escaped the Flood, and I am glad. Will escape, I should say. I am glad you are last; guiding timewalkers is bewildering to a mind born to live in one instant at a time. Mordor is gathering the East and the South. He seeks men like the sand of the sea, but he cannot get it, for Carn’hell’nar rules the Dragons and sets himself up as rival. They are brothers, the Dragon and the Dark Lord; neither dares battle the other, and Sauron hopes to seize the West that he may be secure to fight the East. And even in the South his summons is retarded.” “Why?” He somehow felt it not at all odd to talk about the imaginary world of Middle-earth as if it was real; for if he was walking time, what else might not be possible? Besides the eerie suspicion all Tolkien fans have that Middle-earth is far too real not to have actually existed. “Who is it that walks as man in the secret corners of the earth, whispering and leading and manipulating one against another? The Wizards, child. The Order of Wizards, sent out of the West to be the Enemies of Sauron.” “There were Five, weren’t there? The Grey, and the Brown, and the White…but who were the other two?” “They were Blue.” the Aunt answered. “The Doomsman and the Magician, men call them, but they call themselves other names, the East-helper and the Darkness-slayer. No doubt they have other names still. Men often give labels to things they cannot comprehend.” “What path must I tread?” said Gerald. “The path will seem, as all paths are, to be made of continuous free choices.” she said. “But in reality this has already happened, and whatever your heart chooses, events will force you down it.” “What if sin lies along it?” The old woman’s eyes were sorrowful. “You will seem to yourself to have sinned. You were not the one who asked to come. You chose none of this. Keep your will free, and when your ordeal is done, ask forgiveness.” Gerald bowed his head and tears flowed slowly from his eyes. “I wish I could die.” he choked. “All my life has been one unending downhill war. I have no peace. I am never free. When will it end?” The old woman looked at him with pity. “The only Dragon ever to repent.” she mused. “Perhaps the only Dragon who may be saved. Who can tell, in the end, whether that was not the design of Iluvatar, that unimagined good may come out of your torment?” Gerald’s head slowly lifted. A beautiful smile was growing on his face. “Purgatory.” he said simply. “All this will be only my Purgatory.” “Ah, here is Camille.” said the Aunt. Gerald’s face resumed its’ normal look. “You must be fed, and then I shall set you on your road.” “What road?” said Camille. “Gerald will tell you, if you can understand it.” the Aunt said tartly. Camille, looking both lovelier and out of place in a colorful green Oriental dress, gave him a curious look. He met her gaze impassively. Strange how you could both love and dislike a person at the same time. They were served a splendid meal of rice in odd sweet sauce, with vegetables neither had heard of and thin-roasted slices of pork. Gerald said Grace to himself quietly, then under probing questions from the Aunt had to explain it. “Ah, the Standing Silence of Numenor.” she said, enlightened. “You know of Numenor?” Gerald exclaimed. “Any land with a seacoast knows of them.” the Aunt replied. “But they were an Age and more ago, and have not been seen here for 3000 years.” “Numenor fell.” said Gerald. “So we had heard.” the Aunt answered. “Um, how is it you talk English?” said Camille. “Mutual comprehension,” answered the Aunt, “one effect of walking a trodden path. What was understood by the first walker, you understand, as far as language goes.” Camille looked totally lost. The two strange women bowed as they bade farewell. Jade of Dark Locks went with them for a short way, until they came to a path following the ridge. “Your only hope of returning,” she said, “is to come to the Dragon City and be presented to Carn’hell’nar himself.” She paused. “Such is what I said to all the others, but to you I have a different Seeing. You are trapped in the Path of the Training Dragon. But if you will do exactly as I say, you will be shunted down another path, and you will end in a very different place. On that path your Father cannot find you, for he will be blinded by your own powers, and you will be free until the path ends, and you return.” “What must we do?” “There is woe and torment for you on that path, and evil.” Jade warned. “We’ll take it.” said Camille. “I’d give anything to f-- up my Father.” “Very well. Follow this path until it splits. Take the left fork, but then retrace your steps until you come to the great birch with white bark. Make yourselves invisible. The time-path will try to drag you back onto it: do not move, however strong the urging. Only wait. In twenty minutes a young man and his lover will pass. Step into them; they will be like ghosts to you. You will then be on their path and in their place, doing what they do and moving as they moved, and hidden from your Father.” “God bless you, Jade.” said Gerald. The girl inclined her head, and left. The path curved along the mountain ridge. A cool wind was blowing, taking strange scents with it. It was a beautiful place, but eerily foreign: it did not feel like home, but like an alien land. “So, like, what are we supposed to be doing?” said Camille. “When they come, we walk behind them and into them.” said Gerald. “Don’t look at me. I don’t even believe in time travel.” “Why?” “Lots of reasons. Philosophical, mostly. I don’t really want to go into it while we’re looking for the fork.” They came to the split and bore left for about twelve feet before heading back. Just before the fork was a towering birch of huge size, ragged white bark peeling from it. A sudden powerful urge to run on down the path, to continue the inevitable journey, came upon them: so strong they gripped the bole as if a current was tugging them. It grew greater and greater, like a toothache, and although they were invisible by Gerald’s power they felt horribly visible, as if the growing kink in the time-path they were supposed to be treading but were dragging out of kilter was drawing the attention of the one who laid it down. Grimly they hung on. Their feet were actually lifting off the ground and flowing back down the path by the time the two figures they were waiting for came along. They wore the same outlandish medieval-Oriental style as the others they had seen, but these were of better material and make than the peasants’ dress. Fleeing knights or nobles, perhaps. The young man had a thin but smiling face, worried eyes and glanced constantly around. The girl looked similar to Jade as far as general cast of features went, but less delicate and pretty and more broad. Gerald and Camille waited until they were past and then let go of the birch. Dragging, the former time-path hauled them. With all their strength they maintained an upright posture as they overtook and stepped into the two travelers. The awful tug ceased, as suddenly as if snapped. The old time-path had lost them and they trod a new path. It was like a lock clicking into place. It felt eerie and a little nasty, but much better than the dragging ache of the wait. They were aware that now they were moving at a regular but odd gait unlike their usual manner, and they heard faint echos of voices as the couple they had interstepped spoke to one another. Gerald turned his head. There might be pursuit. The East-helper had been pretty sure there wouldn’t be, but with the corpse of that dragon so near they had not dared to stop in at the Aunt’s but hurried on, as he had instructed. One more day. One more day of travel, and then they would reach the East-helper. Some called him the Doomsman for the reach of his prophecies, but he refused that name. A proud and lofty wizard, yet he was their only hope. He found himself trying to shake his head and failing. It was downright maddening to have someone else’s thoughts buzzing in your mental ears. It was like a radio at work. To distract himself he stared at the trees, and the clouds as they came into higher and more open terrain, as they walked. The breaks were more frequent, and soon the only trees were nestled in hollows and dips in the ridge; the rest was grown with short tough alpine vegetation. Vast vistas of sharp blue mountains laced with cloud stretched away, so unlike anything in Connecticut where the hills all rose to the same level skyline. The gleaming city was gone, swallowed behind a line of peaks like a broken saw, and he was relieved. At least now there were physical barriers between him and the sinister Throne of his Father. They made camp when it was still day out and the sun had not even set; Gerald heard the echoey voices in his head bantering in a flirtatious manner, but he said nothing. It was alarming, too, how his body was behaving: he could not shift to dragon, and when he wanted to get up and hunt, his body remained squatting by the fire he was building. Camille, impatient, cast a blade of concentrated vision from her eyes when her head happened to turn that way, and it acted like a laser, producing a brief spurt of flame. But Gerald found himself laboring on as if she hadn’t, nor did the flame catch. After a while it began to rise and he piled twigs over it. “Why was it doing that?” Camille said irritably, leaning close to him. “I just kindled it.” “It’s fixed, of course.” Gerald said. “You can’t change the Past.” His head leaned close to her and began nuzzling her, to his alarm. “What the heck are you…Hee hee! That tickles!” squealed Camille. She gave him a sound kiss on the mouth. “Oh my God. Did I just kiss you??” she exclaimed. “Blessed be God. I’ll try to pretend you didn’t.” “I guess whoever we’re overlaying must have been a pair of lovebirds.” Camille sighed. Gerald found his hands were running up her waist. Her sigh changed to a delighted moan. “This is totally weird, I’m not even feeling flirty and I’m behaving like a whore,” as she began rubbing against him. “I can’t stop myself, either. What the heck…mmm…is going on?” she said, as well as she could between gasps of pleasure. “This is not you.” Gerald’s voice was like stone. “Nor is this me. We are in another’s path and we must grind out their whole onerous series of events. Forgive me, Camille…my body is no longer my own.” “Oh well, no need to get all worked up over it.” she said, shrugging her dress off her shoulder. “Just relax and let it happen. I’m going to enjoy it.” Gerald gave a grim smile. He looked at his hands, and then let them go limp, his muscles motionless, but still they moved of themselves, his head turned and his mouth moved whether he resisted or not. '' I must keep my will clean, and afterwards beg God for mercy. '' Though his body was gasping with pleasure, he forced his mind to remain detached, to watch with cold paralysis what its’ renegade flesh was doing. '' This is not me. This happened to another. This sin is borne by another. I must not give my consent. '' The world around him was a glorious haze of gold, in which objects were dim and blurry and brilliant. He felt smooth warmth under his hands. He felt his lips pressed violently to flesh. He felt his body rage with passion, and noted it calmly, feeling it beating from outside like a the crash of floods against a submerged stone. Three conditions are needed for a sin to become mortal: serious matter, and sufficient reflection, and full consent of the will. '' His eyes rolled upward in his head, the world around him crumbling into grey static as pure ecstasy suspended his faculties of perception. He watched it, curiously, as a man might watch an insect: it had nothing to do with him. '' The Lord of Lords, the Lord is King… '' Time had no bearing on one whose reason was engulfed, and Gerald, even in his detached condition, noticed nothing. Vaguely he was aware that it was both dark and light: and much warmer, too, why was that? And the sound…the roaring, hissing, snapping? Turn, you idiot! Turn your head! But the idiot he was overlaying had other things on his mind, and did not turn, even though burning twigs were beginning to fall from the burning trees around them. The untended fire had ignited the forest. The idiot finally noticed, scrambling around frantically to grab his belongings. It was a little late for that. The clothes had already gone; the fire was around them, and naked as they were he and Camille pressed close to each other, hands clasped, ready to die. “This is not quite the signal I had in mind, nor the day I had set for it.” Flames sunk as the dry ponderous voice continued, speaking in deep tones words of power, strange words from long ago. Soon the fire was quenched, all save one bonfire on a tree stump. Into the light there came a tall old man, with grey-white hair, haughty long solemn features, and deep-set black eyes. He wore a high pointed hood and a great flowing mantle, fastened by a brooch like a green and gold dragon: his garments underneath were long loose robes. He leaned on a great carven staff of black wood. Mantle and garments were a stained and worn sea-blue. “See the results of your dalliance.” he said scornfully, his eyes passing across their nakedness without the slightest trace of human lust, only a lofty contempt. This was a man removed completely from the carnal. If he was a man at all. “Go naked, then, until we meet the camp, ere I conjure thee garments.” “My lord Romestamo, I am guiltless.” said Gerald coldly. He heard the voices in his ears saying something different: let them. “Are thee, indeed? That is good. I know thee, Dragon Gerald and Dragon Camille. Come. Share my mantle, and I will share my food. We have much to discuss.” “You know us, Sir?” said Gerald as the Blue Wizard draped the mantle around both of them. It felt good: although still sweaty and worked up from their actions, both had begun to shiver in the cold mountain air. “You are timewalking.” said the Wizard. “But, Sir, that is impossible.” “And you are absolutely right.” Romestamo answered. “You see, no one can really ''be physically in the Past. The matter of the Past has already been woven into new forms by the Present, and there alone is there physical existence. Though I speak in the Present, you are hearing me eleven thousand and five hundred years later as you walk amid what has been, and I through my vallian prophetic gift know this and know what you will say, and answer accordingly so as to form a single dislocated conversation. The poor fuddled fools you inhabit are under the impression I am talking to ghosts in a strange language: for I am speaking your tongue.” “Then what are we in?” “The Past does not exist in solid reality, only in memory. Iluvatar’s memory, perhaps. Only when the Theme has been played out to the End and the last chord sung, will all of the Tale be complete to see and walk within; and what solidity or form it will wear, not even the Valar know. You walk in Time’s memory, but you walk down a path of events that have already happened. They seem therefore to you to be happening in the Present, but they do not. This is the work of that fallen spirit now clad in dragon form who rules on the Throne. He saw that in future he would need to show his children the Dragonthrone, and so he constructed a time-path for them.” “What is a time-path?” “There are as many paths as there are physical beings, and each being is a multitude of paths of separate particles as they briefly converge along their journeys. The events that happen to any one being form a path in time, event after event all down the ages of that being’s existence, until he ends and his path stops, and the matter that composes him resumes time-paths in other beings. The Father of Dragons made a time-path of events that happened to NO ONE, for he caused a pair of illusions to walk that path and arranged for everything that followed, even to a dragon impaling itself on a tree for no reason. With a path of events around nothing, he could put anyone into it from the future: they would come out of the cave and be in the Past, so that everything along the path would happen to them. But you are no longer on that path.” “Yes, and I don’t understand.” “Being in your own physical bodies yet walking in the Past, one must follow a time-path of events or else merely behold it like a vision; and if the path of your Father is shut, step onto a different one. You have done so. Following the path of these two fleeing nobles you have escaped your Father, though at the cost of suffering the sin of others to stain you. You feel and move as they did, and what happens to them, so to you: this is the only time-travel that can be, unless your mind should travel by vision.” “Sir, how can we escape?” The Blue Wizard leaned forward. “Listen well, for after that our conversation ceases, and I speak to the fools you have overlaid. Their time-path is very near an end. When they end, you will return to the Graveyard, but away from the Woken Dragons: this grace Eru has granted, because you, Gerald, kept yourself clean. There is a way out of the Graveyard. You will see a cluster of crags a darker red than the others ahead of you when your eyes clear: go left of it. A bridge of stone rises, curving on itself: go under it. You will see a purple wall: go right. Walk in a direct line a hundred yards. You will find the remains of an ancient road, a fragment of an elbow climb, resting alone in the desert. Step onto this and follow it. You will be on the Roads the Stars built through the Nine ‘Heres’, the nine layers of physical space, and the Graveyard is one of these layers, but the road leads out of it. Go downhill, not up. More I do not know. The Valar keep you.” His gaze hardened, cruel as stone. “I heard your sniggering, Allentassa and Van of Golden Teeth. I am no dotard. I am East-helper, and Doomsman, and I come out of the West. I know why you seek out the Blue Wizard. You wish to have him send for Sauron to invade Dragonthrone, and you will tell him all you know about this realm. I am the Enemy of Sauron, one of the Five. You are traitors.” The staff flamed a fiery blue. “And the penalty for treason is death.” Then splitting blue pain engulfed Gerald and Camille. Back to Arheled